by Jack Hamlyn
“Sorry, chum,” I said to him, waving flies away. “I need this more you do.”
I strapped the knife on and felt better right away. Funny how that is. How naked a human feels without a weapon in their hands. How a good club or a sharp blade makes you feel complete. I suppose that is a reflection of our bloodthirsty, violent ancestors.
I kicked a few shell casings as I walked. They glinted in the sun.
I had a feeling that all the dead men I saw—and they were all men—had had guns in their hands when they died. But someone had removed them. I saw bullet holes in brick walls that were indicative of automatic weapons or light machineguns.
I came to a big guy who’d had his legs shot out from under him. In death, his hands were still clenched on a nonexistent rifle. I flipped him over with my boot. I found nothing good on him save a pack of Marlboro Reds and a disposable lighter. I took those and had myself a smoke. I kept walking, taking my time, enjoying my smoke and the day, looking around for a vehicle that might run.
I heard a slurping sound.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
I had heard such sounds enough to know what they entailed. I meandered around a post office truck sitting on flat tires. Behind it, a zombie was chewing at the throat of a corpse. It was a woman. She was naked and there were flies in her hair. She lifted her head as I approached and looked at me, her face splattered with blood. Gore dropped from her mouth.
“Hey,” I said for some stupid reason.
She just looked at me, and then started eating again. Her eyes were dead and bovine. She was just like all the others, an appetite and nothing more. As disgusting as it was, I was pretty desensitized by that point. Even the hot stink of death in the street didn’t touch me.
“What’re you doing?” I said.
She lifted her head, more gore dropping from her mouth. Then she started eating again. She was like a dog that responds to its name, my voice triggering something in her rotting brain, but that was about it. I couldn’t help noticing that she bore a striking resemblance to Lindsay Lohan, in her later years when she became a drugged-out wild child. I imagined that, whoever she was, she had been quite attractive in life. She was slim, round-hipped, long-legged, dirty blonde hair sweeping down her back. When she lifted her head, I saw that she had had very nice breasts. The effect was ruined because the nipple was bitten off one of them.
I started thinking about sex.
Not with Lindsay, the zombie, but sex among the dead. Did they ever do it? They were animals once Necrophage woke them. Basal, primitive. It would stand to reason that the sexual urge would be magnified in them like the hunger urge. I was feeling no ill effects from my bite yet, other than the fact that it was sore. Yet, something in my mind had gone very fatalistic and I was thinking things I wouldn’t normally have thought. I wondered what Lindsay would do if I went up behind her and entered her. I wasn’t going to, I was just wondering. The idea struck me as funny and I started laughing. The reality of such a thing was appalling, of course. It would have been like mounting a beef carcass hanging in a butcher shop. Still…I laughed and laughed.
Lindsay looked up at me, and then went back to her meal.
I was convinced then that Necrophage had me. Once you started finding things like that funny, something was wrong.
I walked off and right away, I found more bodies…in whole and in pieces. I counted eight of them. One of them had been torn in half as if it was cut with scissors. There had been some serious firepower directed here. The fronts of buildings were scathed not only by bullets but by shrapnel. Some of the stiffs were wearing camouflage fatigues. One guy had a rifle trapped beneath him, an M16. The magazine was full as if he had slapped it in and been killed before he chambered a single round. I pulled it out from under him. It was stained with blood, but useable. I aimed it at the sky and fired off a three-round burst.
Things were looking up.
I went into the nearest building whose door had been blown off its hinges. I was in a grocery store. It was an absolute shambles. The place had been looted, re-looted, and re-re-looted. Then the mice or rats came in and finished it off. Racks were tipped over, shelves emptied, bags of Corn Flakes and noodles and dog food burst open and spread over the floor. You couldn’t take two steps without making a lot of crunching. I meandered my way through until I got back towards the meat counter which was empty of everything but scales. The glass display cases had all been kicked in.
I found some bandages and rubbing alcohol and treated the bite on my wrist. It was sore, but it didn’t look infected. I cleaned it thoroughly, wincing at the pain, and wrapped it up. Maybe it was a waste of time. Maybe I’d be a zombie in a matter of hours. Time would tell.
I was hungry.
After what I ate at Hillbilly Henry’s, I didn’t think I’d ever be able to eat again, but I needed food. I needed it badly. I started sorting around and the only thing I could find was a dented can of tomato paste and a bottle of mineral water, papaya-flavored. I opened the tomato paste can with my knife. It tasted really, really good. The papaya-flavored water was horrible: it was warm and disgusting. But I drank it down. I ate the paste and finished the water. Then I had another smoke and I wondered what the hell I was going to do now.
When would the Zombpox really begin?
When would I become delirious?
I had to get to my boy. I wanted to sit there and lament my poor, wasted existence, but there wasn’t time. I stood up wearily, some half-baked dream in the back of my mind unreeling, showing me the calm, easy existence of backyard barbecues, afternoon naps, and long, slow, lazy Sundays that I had known before The Awakening. Even if I killed every zombie, every paramilitary fuckhead, every shitbag survivalist, I’d never know that again. I’d never know peace or contentment ever again. The very idea squeezed tears from my eyes.
I don’t know how long I sat there feeling sorry for myself.
My revelry was interrupted when two guys stepped through the door. They both had snub-nosed AK-47s. I brought my rifle up. I would have had them; they were easy kills. The problem was my M16 chose that moment to jam. Just my fucking luck.
“Drop it, fuckhead,” one of my visitors said.
I had no doubt that what I was dealing with here were a couple of ARM pukes. They wore the Russian shadow camouflage they so favored. Their appearance explained what all those gunned-down bodies were doing in the streets. Townspeople. Probably defending their little village against an ARM incursion. I had hoped beyond hope that ARM were not operating up in the Catskills, but I was wrong. Terribly wrong.
“Stand up,” one of them said.
“How do you figure we missed him, Jib?”
“Must’ve been hiding.”
I stood up and they marched me out the door. I asked them what this was all about and they beat me down. I climbed to my feet and on we marched. We went through the town and out into a baseball field beyond where there were an easy twenty more of their brothers. Tied to the chain-link fence surrounding the field were five or six people. They were in rough shape: beaten, bloodied. Living, but not much more. I was tied to the fence with them. None of the other victims took notice of me.
Every time I tried to ask a question, I got hit, so I kept my mouth shut.
This was it. That’s what I figured. I didn’t see what the point of rounding us up and tying us down was when they were just going to shoot us anyway. They could have gunned me down in the grocery store and saved themselves some trouble. Never let it be said that ARM was unimaginative.
I sighed.
I was so tired of it all I couldn’t even feel sorry for myself. All I could think about was how I had promised Ricki that I would take care of Paul. I hoped Tuck, Diane, Sabelia, and the others would take good care of him. I mean, I hated the idea that all my struggling and fighting ended here on a fence…but I was bitten anyway. What good was I alive? At least it would save me from rising back up.
The ARM soldiers chatted, smoked, a
nd cracked a few jokes. They didn’t bother harassing us. We did not exist to them. A couple trucks rolled up and they piled inside and drove off.
What?
They were leaving us like this?
Sure, why not? Sooner or later, the zombies would sniff us out and eat us. That’s what I figured was going to happen. And I was right. Because as I struggled at my bonds, I saw the zombies coming. Easily fifty or more. They were doing a slow march from the town to our position. They never move fast, but they never stop either. They just keep coming. That’s when I noticed that just behind them, there was an armored vehicle with something like a bullhorn fixed above the cab. The zombies did not turn and attack the vehicle, they just poured ever forward.
I had seen this before.
ARM had some kind of technology that allowed them to herd the dead. I had been on the wrong end of it several times. But now I was seeing it in action. That bullhorn device I saw was no bullhorn. It was a parabolic antenna, the sort that are used to direct UHF and microwave frequencies. Whatever they were broadcasting—something not within the range of my ears—it was pushing the zombies away from them and right at us. The armored vehicle, a Guardian ASV, moved behind them until they were closing in on the baseball field and then pulled back and away. I saw a rising dust cloud to mark its passing.
Ten minutes later, it still had not come back.
By then, the zombies were circling the baseball field, which gave us sacrifices maybe twenty minutes before they had us for lunch.
I started straining at my binds, knowing it was pointless, but I had to try. God knows, I had to try. As I fought and sweated, my face red, veins popping in my neck, a voice said, “Looks like you want to get free pretty bad.”
The voice was from the other side of the fence, at my back. It was a girl. I knew that much. Her voice was rough-sounding. A match was struck off the fence and I smelled cigarette smoke.
“Cut me loose. There’s not much time.”
She made a grunting sound. “You got time, mister. Lots of it. It’ll take those maggot-brains half an hour to find the gate. They’re pretty funny when you watch ‘em from a distance. They’ll find the gate, then ten of the dumb fuckers will try to go through it at the same time. It’s like comedy, you know? Like Moe, Larry, and Curly going through a doorway. Spread out, you mugs.” She started giggling and I could hear the stark desperation just beneath it. “No, you got all kinds of time.”
“Listen, miss, if you could just—”
“You smell really bad, man.”
I sighed. “Yeah, well, I’ve been fighting those things and crawling through their bodies for days.”
“Gross.”
“Couldn’t be helped.”
She got in closer at my back and a cloud of smoke blew over my head. “Who you hooked up with?”
“Nobody. I’m looking for some friends that have a farm around here.”
“Lots of farms, man. Lots of shitkickers and hayseeds.”
I watched the zombies patrolling the fence. They hadn’t found the gate yet and I couldn’t get past the idea that my new friend was right; there was something kind of funny about them. They were like a bunch of slat-thin, dumb-assed hounds looking for a doggie door.
“You from around here?” I asked her.
She laughed. It was a grating, cynical sound. “Fuck that. I’m from Brooklyn. Bensonhurst. Eighty-sixth street. Do I sound like I’m from this shitsplat?”
I heard the Brooklyn in her voice, but I didn’t mention it. “No, you don’t. I’m from Yonkers. Steve Niles.”
“Robin Arduccio. Pleased to meet ya.”
“That’s a good Italian name.”
“I’m from Bensonhurst, ain’t I?”
I wasn’t sure what to make of her and I wouldn’t until I could get free and see her. “Listen, could you just cut me free? I don’t like waiting here. I feel like a pig with an apple in its mouth.”
She laughed. “What’s it worth to you?”
I sighed again. “I don’t have anything. Those assholes took my gun, my knife. I don’t have shit. If I had something, I’d share it with you.”
“What about that farm?”
“What about it?”
“They got food?”
“Yeah. Lots of it. If I can find it.”
The zombies had found the gate now. They were mulling around it, trying to force their way in. It was getting really unfunny now. I had mere minutes to live.
“The farm’s by Catskills State Park.”
“That’s only a couple miles from here.”
“So cut me loose and we’ll go get something to eat.”
More smoke drifted over my head. “Okay. That sounds fair, but don’t go thinking you own me, because nobody owns me. And I don’t spread my legs unless I want to. You try something and I’ll fucking stick you. Got it?”
“Got it.”
She cut my ropes free and I jumped to my feet, rubbing my wrists. I climbed up and over the fence, and dropped into the grass not far from her. She just stood there, staring at me, looking me up and down. Robin Arduccio was fourteen or fifteen, I guessed, a tough girl who wore scuffed motorcycle boots, jeans with gaping holes, and a gray pocketed t-shirt with Betty Boop raising her middle finger. Her jet-black hair had copper streaks in it. It fell to her shoulders. Her eyes were a very soft blue, her lips very full, almost exaggerated like those a comic book artist would draw. She was pretty, but very edgy. There were dragons tattooed on the undersides of her forearms and her chipped nail polish was black. She had a hunting knife sheathed on her belt and a black motorcycle jacket draped over one shoulder.
“What about the rest of these people?” I asked.
“They’re gone already.”
“We can’t just leave them there.”
“Why not?”
But there was no choice. The zombies were flooding into the baseball diamond and going after the offerings. There was nothing to be done.
“C’mon,” Robin said. “Unless you want to watch ‘em get eaten.”
REBEL WITH A CAUSE
Giving a wide berth to the baseball field, we walked back into town. The bodies were still in the streets, except that zombies were feeding on them now. Robin said that ARM had gotten them all stirred up as they often did. The idea that ARM was using some type of subsonic sound waves to direct the dead was no surprise to her. She’d seen it many times. Robin knew her way around town and she led me to a garage where she had a Toyota 4Runner SUV stored. It was mud-spattered, dirt brown, and ugly as sin, but it would do the job.
“You like it?” Robin asked. “It’s mine.”
“Yours?”
“Well, it is now. I’m the one who’s been keeping it running. It’ll get us to the farm.”
She lit a cigarette, staring at me. I think she was waiting for me to disagree with her smoking at her young age so she could tell me to go fuck myself. In fact, I’m certain of it. But I wasn’t about to do that. She saved my life and I wasn’t about to lecture. It had all changed now. What had been wrong or socially unacceptable before, seemed positively trivial in a world where corpses came out of their graves to feed on the living.
I had a smoke with her, sketching out briefly how I came to be in town. It was a long, confused, nearly unbelievable story. It took me about twenty minutes to lay it down. I left out the bit about eating human meat and being bitten by the zombie, but other than that, I told her everything.
“Your wife,” she said. “Was she nice?”
“Yes.”
“Did you love her?”
“Yes.”
“That’s cool. My parents weren’t like that.”
It was her turn for confession. I had been wondering what this Brooklyn street tough was doing up in the ‘kills and she gave me the basics. It wasn’t a very pretty story. In fact, it was downright desperate. Her father was some sort of career criminal who had been sent to prison when she was three-years old for narcotics trafficking and murder. She almost spo
ke with pride of the badass he’d been, pushing junk and murdering anyone who got in his way. That had bought him forty years at Greenhaven Correctional. Whether he was still alive or not, she didn’t know. Her mother had committed suicide four years previously. This confession was the only thing that softened her demeanor. Like I said, she was a pretty girl and there was a softness in her blue eyes, but she fought against the fact at every turn. She put out an attitude that she was tough, untouchable, hard as stone…yet, when she spoke very briefly of her mother, practically dismissing the idea with a wave of her hand, she softened and I could gauge her pain. She was hurt by the memory, traumatized. It made her vulnerable and that made her angry. After her mother “checked out” (as she put it), she ended up in one foster home after another and I got the feeling that she was nothing but trouble and her foster parents found her hard to handle. Then she ended up in an orphanage here in the Catskills, very far away from the mean streets of Brooklyn where she had spawned.
“It wasn’t so bad,” she said, “other than the fucking boredom. At least they didn’t try to touch you and shit. You could sleep at night, man, without worrying that somebody was going to put it to you.”
As we stood there in the garage, leaning up against the Toyota, I listened to her speak. She went on and on, nonstop. I had the feeling that she had not had a real conversation with anyone in a long, long time. That she trusted me enough to bare her soul meant a lot to me, because she had no reason to trust me, or anyone else, for that matter. She’d been through the shit and her confession was like lancing a boil and letting the poison run free. In many ways, she reminded me of Sabelia, who was part of our little community, and had attached herself to me. Both she and Robin had come up hard in the streets and they both put out the same vibe: keep your distance, you invade my private space and I’ll fucking hurt you bad. But like Sabelia, inside there were leagues of pain, countless wounds barely scabbed over.